Could eating fruit make you crave high-calorie foods?

This is a timely article in that I was just having a similar discussion with a co-worker, specifically eating fruit vs. drinking fruit jucies.  Eat the fruit and benefit from the fiber…drinking juice…well maybe not so much….

 

Consuming glucose could make you feel fuller than fructose, study says

A new study in PNAS suggests that the type of sugar you eat could affect your desire for high-calorie food, Nickolas Bakalar reports for the New York Times‘ “Well” blog.

For the study, researchers gave 24 participants a 10-ounce glass of cherry-flavored liquid that either contained 2.5 ounces of fructose—the sugar found in fruits, honey, and corn syrup—or glucose. They then measured subjects’ blood for levels of glucose, fructose, and insulin, as well as two enzymes involved in controlling hunger and feelings of fullness.

Before consuming the beverages, participants’ rated their desire to eat on a scale of one to 10. After consuming the beverages, participants looked at pictures of food or neutral objects like baskets or buildings while researchers conducted functional magnetic resonance imaging brain scans. When researchers showed the participants high-calorie foods, they asked whether they would rather be rewarded with that high-calorie food immediately or monetary compensation in one month.

Compared with the glucose drinkers, the individuals who consumed fructose had more active responses to food cues in their brains’ frontal cortexes, which play a significant part in reward processing. They were also more likely to take the immediate food reward and had more activity in their visual cortexes while looking at pictures of food.

Kathleen Page, an assistant professor of clinical medicine at the Keck School of Medicineof the University of Southern California and senior author of the study, says unlike glucose, “fructose doesn’t stimulate insulin secretion, and if there’s no insulin, you don’t get the information that you’re full.”

However, she says the study should not discourage people from eating fruit, which is high in fructose. Fruit “has a relatively low amount of sugar compared with processed foods and soft drinks—maybe five grams in an orange, compared with 25 grams in a 12-ounce can of soda. And it is packed with fiber, which helps slow down the absorption of food, which makes you feel full,” Page concludes (Bakalar, “Well,” New York Times, 5/4; Sifferlin, TIME, 5/4; Miller, Yahoo Health, 5/4).

The takeaway: A new study finds that people who consume fructose are less likely to feel full and more likely to crave high-calorie foods than those who consume glucose. However, researchers say the findings should not discourage people from eating fruit, which is high in fibers that satiate hunger.

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